DIS­PLACED

Iron­i­cally, flood­ing is vi­tal for Kazi­ranga’s ecol­ogy. But as gov­ern­ments dither on an
in­te­grated river man­age­ment plan, a sed­i­ment-laden Brahma­pu­tra is killing too many too oen. and
re­port on a re­cur­ring targedy

ITS GAZE trans­fixed on the busy road, the hog deer was shiv­er­ing. Shoul­der-deep in chill­ing wa­ter, the tired crea­ture was strug­gling to stay afloat. It made its way through the sweep­ing cur­rents of the Brahma­pu­tra to the edge of a sub­merged Kazi­ranga. The high­land where it could find its feet was fi­nally within sight, but it was on the other side of the af­ter­noon traf­fic on a noisy high­way.

“It was on 28 June. We were vol­un­teer­ing with a pa­trol team on Na­tional High­way-37 when we spot­ted the an­i­mal near Bu­ra­pa­har. Too fright­ened to ap­proach the road, it did not move ex­cept for in­vol­un­tary ef­forts to avoid be­ing swept